By now I would expect harvest to be finished and be busy drilling wheat, but this is not the case.

I still have 30ha of linseed left to cut. The last 10ha harvested took me four full days.

This is the first time I have grown linseed, and if it wasn’t for the failed oilseed rape I wouldn’t have grown it. But I was offered a good price and it appeared cheap to grow. 

I planted it in March at a seed rate of 50kg/h with the Discordon and seeder into good conditions, then applied 105kg N/ha and sprayed it with Callisto (mesotrione).

About the author

Mark Stubbs

Mark Stubbs manages his 700ha family arable farm in Lincolnshire, in partnership with his parents. The farm grows wheat, malting barley, oilseed rape, linseed and cover crops. Mark won the highest yielding winter wheat crop in the 2024 YEN awards.

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It grew well and thick, maybe too thick and continued to look good. All seemed well until storm Lilian hit it at the end of August which caused it to go flat.

Fortunately, it popped back up a week later. 

I thought everything was going perfect. It was ripening early and I was able to spray it off with glyphosate at the start of September with the hope of harvesting it two weeks later.

However, the weather went against me, until a sunny day in October when we attempted to harvest it.

I went 10m into the crop and wrapped it around my header auger, so I rang some fellow farmers for advice and was told to take my fingers out of the auger and tape up the holes. 

After doing that I tried another 10m and the same thing happened. I scratched my head and rang some more farmers and was advised to lift the header auger height. 

Away we went again. This time I was able to get the crop to feed into the combine at a speed of 1.8km/ha. Then on my New Holland CR 8.90, the concave shear bolt snapped suddenly. 

After fixing we went again, only to get a stone in the front, breaking the intake elevator chains. So I was out for a further two days fixing that. 

Finally, the weather came nice to try again, but I was having issues with the crop wrapping around the top of the intake elevator cogs, causing the chains to jump and eventually breaking the intake elevator chains (again). 

Will I grow linseed again?  The answer is simple – never again!  If anyone has any advice or is willing to harvest it for me, feel free to email me at stubbsmark@hotmail.com.